Hardcastle's Runaway

By Graham Ison

Hardcastle’s mission to find a headstrong young woman leads to some disturbing twists and turns.

March, 1919. The head of CID at New Scotland Yard has a task for Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of A Division: find Lily Musgrave, the missing daughter of Austen Musgrave MP.

Hardcastle, aided by Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott, discovers that the headstrong Lily Musgrave provides risqué entertainment for a number of ex-officers. When she returns home of her own accord, however, Hardcastle assumes the case is closed and turns his attention to arranging the finer details of his daughter Maud’s wedding.

But no sooner is the wedding over than Lily Musgrave goes missing again. And this time, finding her might not be so easy . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780108681

Graham Ison

During Graham Ison’s thirty-year career in Scotland Yard’s Special Branch he was involved in several espionage cases. He also spent four years at 10 Downing Street as Protection Officer to two Prime Ministers. He is an honorary agent of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command.

Book preview

ONE

The euphoria that had engulfed the nation with the signing of the Armistice in November 1918 did not last for very long. By March 1919 the full effects of the Great War were beginning to take their toll. Factories producing the shells that had rained down on the enemy were, at best, now equipping their workshops to cater for the demands of peace. Others stood idle, their employees made redundant. Mills that had manufactured huge quantities of army uniforms, and those plants producing food or other necessaries for the military were suddenly faced with the disappearance of those markets and the real possibility of bankruptcy. It meant that in many cases war workers were now without jobs, but as many of them were women, and returned to their pre-war life of domesticity, the impact was not as great as had been feared.

And there was another problem. Sir Robert Horne, the Minister of Labour, decided that skilled men, essential to post-war industry, would be released from the armed forces first. But as they were often the last to have been conscripted, the long-serving men were incensed; riots followed, and in some cases mutinies. To resolve this wave of discontent and disorder, Winston Churchill instituted the principle of ‘first in, first out’.

Nevertheless, blind men and men with missing limbs thronged the streets in search of work that was not there, and many discharged officers were persuaded to invest their meagre savings in dubious ventures that inevitably failed. Rudyard Kipling’s evocative poem Tommy sprang to mind when it became apparent that ‘our brave boys’, who had ‘fought the good fight’ were in many cases regarded as an embarrassment.

The Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands where that ambivalent nation – one that had remained stolidly neutral throughout the war – charitably afforded him asylum. Attempts to extradite him for war crimes were thwarted by Queen Wilhelmina. And in Versailles the victors raked over the ashes of war, argued about the terms of a seemingly elusive peace treaty and attempted to calculate how much a bankrupt Germany could be expected to pay in reparations. When it came to it, they paid very little. In the meantime, British soldiers were deployed in support of the White Russians, who were hoping vainly to turn the flood tide of Bolshevism.

These troubles were serious enough, but they were now in danger of being overshadowed by a threat far graver even than the Great War and its consequences. The death toll of the influenza pandemic looked set to exceed the total of fatalities that the world had inflicted upon itself during the ‘war to end all wars’.

Divisional Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle, head of the CID for the A or Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police, had his office on the first floor of Cannon Row police station. He was fully aware of the impact that the depressing state of the nation was having on crime. Figures were already reflecting an increase in burglaries, larceny and in some cases even smash-and-grab raids, principally on jewellers’ shops and other purveyors of high-value goods.

Pawnbrokers did not escape this onslaught of crime either. In many cases, pawned goods were unlikely to be redeemed, their owners getting deeper into debt as the weeks passed without work. Occasionally, though, those owners had other ideas, and the police strongly suspected that they were repossessing their goods and chattels by way of shop-breaking, it being the only way in which they could lay hands on them again.

However, none of this occupied Hardcastle’s mind on the morning of Monday the third of March, 1919.

‘Good morning, sir.’ Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott stepped into the DDI’s office. Marriott was the first-class sergeant who oversaw the work of the junior detectives in the Cannon Row subdivision. He was also the officer whom Hardcastle invariably chose as his assistant whenever he investigated a murder. At thirty-six years of age, the six-foot tall Marriott had a youthful appearance and the sort of chiselled features that caused many women to afford him a second glance and a hopeful smile. But they hoped in vain; Marriott was happily married to Lorna, a striking blonde only an inch or two shorter than her husband. And he adored their two children.

‘What is it, Marriott?’ Hardcastle, hands in his pockets, had been staring down into Westminster Underground station, but turned from the window as his sergeant entered the room.

‘Detective Superintendent Wensley’s clerk telephoned, sir. You’re to see Mr Wensley as soon as possible. His clerk stressed the urgency, sir.’

‘He stressed the urgency, did he, Marriott? Prone to panic, is he, this clerk of Mr Wensley’s, eh? Still a PC, is he? Or have they made him a sergeant?’

Marriott permitted himself a brief smile; his chief was clearly in a jocular mood this morning. ‘I don’t think so, sir. He’s been Mr Wensley’s clerk for some time.’

‘That’s the trouble with these tuppenny-ha’penny pen-pushers, Marriott; they’ve been in the job so long they think the trumpets are sounding for them as well. Time they were sent back to the streets to find out what real police work’s like.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Marriott, sensing the onset of one of Hardcastle’s tirades about those he called ‘office-wallahs’, decided that a monosyllabic reply was the safest form of response.

Hardcastle glanced at his chrome half-hunter, wound it briefly and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Better see what he wants, I suppose.’ Putting on his bowler hat and grabbing his umbrella, without either of which he would never be seen outside, he made his way across the narrow roadway between Cannon Row police station and Commissioner’s Office, as policemen are wont to call New Scotland Yard.

When Hardcastle had joined the Metropolitan Police twenty-eight years ago, he had stared in awe at Norman Shaw’s impressive building. Then but a year old and already being referred to colloquially as ‘the Yard’, it had been built of Dartmoor granite hewn by convicts from the prison situated on that bleak moorland. Dominating Victoria Embankment, the Yard towered over most of the nearby buildings. But Hardcastle was no longer impressed by it; he had visited it too often.

‘All correct, sir.’ At the top of the flight of steps leading to the main entrance, a constable opened the heavy door and saluted.

Hardcastle grunted in reply; he was always irritated by the routine reports which uniformed officers were obliged to make, and which they made whether everything was all correct or not. But, perversely, he would be just as annoyed if a junior officer omitted so to report.

It was only a short walk along the stone-flagged corridor to Wensley’s office. Removing his bowler hat and hooking his umbrella over one arm, Hardcastle knocked lightly and entered without awaiting a response.

Detective Superintendent Frederick Wensley was an imposing figure, always immaculately dressed in a dark suit, laundered white shirt with wing collar and a pearl tiepin. He had been dubbed ‘Ace’ by the popular newspapers on account of his detective prowess, but to the officers under his command he was known by the irreverent sobriquet of ‘Elephant’ – an acknowledgment of the size of his nose. When he had started his career in the CID he had been a teetotaller, but that changed when he found that informants would not trust a detective who refused to take a drink with them. Now fifty-four years of age, he had been a policeman for thirty-one years and was in charge of all the detectives in a quarter of the capital, including most of East London and Bow Street.

‘Does the name Austen Musgrave mean anything to you, Ernie?’ asked Wensley, having told Hardcastle to sit down.

‘I can’t say it does, sir.’

‘He’s a member of parliament and lives in Vincent Square on your manor.’

‘Has he been murdered, sir?’ Hardcastle was already formulating the severe reprimand he would deliver to Detective Inspector Alexander Neville, the officer in charge of the CID for the Rochester Row subdivision, for failing to report this murder to him, news of which had somehow reached Mr Wensley before Hardcastle had learned of it.

‘No, he’s very much alive, but Mr Musgrave is worried about his seventeen-year-old daughter. Apparently she’s a bit of a wayward girl and has been missing for three days now. He’s asked for police assistance in tracing her.’

‘But the Uniform Branch deals with missing persons, sir,’ protested Hardcastle. ‘It’s hardly a job for—’

‘I know, Ernie,’ said Wensley, raising a staying hand, ‘but Mr Musgrave happens to be a friend of the Commissioner and he telephoned him this morning asking for assistance. Sir Nevil sent for me and asked me to put my best detective on to the matter. And now, Ernie, you’re about to meet him.’

‘Mr Musgrave, sir?’

‘Not immediately,’ said Wensley. ‘You’re to see the Commissioner first.’

Walking further along the corridor from Wensley’s office, the two detectives mounted the several flights of stairs that led to the Commissioner’s turret office overlooking the River Thames.

‘Go in, Mr Wensley,’ said the Commissioner’s secretary. ‘Sir Nevil is expecting you.’

Although Hardcastle had never met the man still referred to as the ‘new’ Commissioner, he knew something of his background. A professional soldier and now fifty-six years of age, General Sir Nevil Macready had spent the first two years of the Great War in France with the BEF, but in 1916 he had been appointed Adjutant-General to the Forces and transferred to the War Office in London. Unusually for a general, he was clean-shaven, but one of Macready’s first acts in his new appointment was to rescind the order requiring all soldiers to have a moustache. Once that order was signed, Macready visited a barber and had his own ‘unsightly bristles’, as he termed them, shaved off.

‘So you’re Ernie Hardcastle.’ After spending a few seconds appraising the A Division DDI’s stocky figure and affording his bushy moustache an amused glance, Macready stood up and skirted his desk to shake hands with him. ‘Mr Wensley says you’re one of his best detectives.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Hardcastle was stunned that the Commissioner had addressed him so informally. But that familiarity bore out what was already known throughout the Force – that Macready was not averse to talking to constables and sergeants in order to better assess the morale of the rank and file. And in an attempt to discover whether there was likely to be a repeat of the abortive police strike that had taken place last year. Macready preferred to call it a mutiny and it had brought about his appointment following the resignation of the former commissioner, Sir Edward Henry.

‘I imagine that Mr Wensley has told you that Austen Musgrave is a friend of mine.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Austen Musgrave made a great deal of money during the war manufacturing uniforms. He earned it honestly, which makes a refreshing change, and has contributed a substantial sum to soldiers’ charities. But, like so many busy men, he had little time to devote to his only daughter and I gather, from what he’s told me, that she’s rather gone off the rails. Now, it seems, she’s gone missing.’

‘I see, sir.’ Hardcastle was still overawed by the Commissioner’s affable approach, which was unlike his predecessor’s somewhat formal and starchy character, though Hardcastle had never met Henry. ‘Am I to take it that Mrs Musgrave is deceased, sir?’

‘Not as far as I know. I believe Marie Musgrave is estranged from her husband and lives somewhere in the shires but I’m not sure about that. Lily – she’s the missing daughter – preferred to stay with her father, presumably because the location of his house affords easy access to the bright lights of London.’

‘Is Mr Musgrave at home, sir? It being a Monday, sometimes the gentry aren’t back from the country.’ Hardcastle was struggling to formulate the right sentences with which to address the Commissioner.

Macready smiled. ‘Yes, he telephoned me from Vincent Square this morning.’

‘I’ll go and see him immediately, sir.’ Hardcastle paused. ‘I usually take my best sergeant with me on enquiries, sir. I wonder if—’

Macready raised a hand. ‘My dear fellow, you must do exactly as you see fit. I know very little about the police force, although I’m learning fast, and I know even less about the detective department. Mr Wensley trusts you and so, therefore, do I. Go about this case exactly as you would any other.’

‘Would you want a daily report, sir?’ asked Wensley of the Commissioner.

‘Good heavens, no, Fred,’ said Macready. ‘I can’t abide negative reports, and in any case I’m sure you’ll keep an eye on things. Just let me know if there are any developments in the matter. And now, I’ll not delay you gentlemen any further. Good day to you both.’

‘Marriott!’ Hardcastle shouted for his sergeant as he passed the open door of the detectives’ office. ‘Come in here, now.’

Quickly buttoning his waistcoat and donning his jacket, Marriott hurried across the passageway to the DDI’s office. ‘Sir?’

‘We’ve got a missing-person enquiry to deal with, Marriott.’ Hardcastle began filling his pipe with his favourite St Bruno tobacco.

‘But—’

‘Before you say anything else, Marriott, I’ve just seen the Commissioner and he’s assigned me to this case. And when the Commissioner tells you to do something, you do it.’

‘Yes, sir.’ There was little else that Marriott could say in the face of the DDI’s truism.

‘Sit down, m’boy.’ It was rare for Hardcastle to invite Marriott to sit down and equally rare for him to adopt a familiar approach. ‘I’ve been in the Job for twenty-eight years,’ he began reflectively, ‘and this morning was the first time I’ve ever met a Commissioner, even though I’ve now served under three of them.’ Lighting his pipe and blowing a plume of tobacco smoke towards the nicotine-stained ceiling of his office, the DDI told Marriott what he knew so far of the matter of the missing Lily Musgrave, which was precious little. ‘And now we’ll go to Mr Musgrave’s house in Vincent Square and see what’s what.’

When Hardcastle and Marriott alighted from their cab, the DDI paused and looked thoughtfully around Vincent Square. ‘That’s the back of Rochester Row nick, across there, Marriott,’ he said, pointing to a building on the far side of the square, in the centre of which was Westminster School’s playing field. ‘I wonder if the idle coppers who live in the section house there saw anything.’

‘I wouldn’t think it would be anything useful, sir,’ ventured Marriott, not for the first time failing to follow his DDI’s line of reasoning. He doubted the girl had been abducted from her own home and dragged out kicking and screaming to a waiting motor car. But Hardcastle disliked any comment that bordered on the sarcastic, although he was not above making such comments himself.

Hardcastle turned and mounted the twelve steps leading to the front door of Austen Musgrave’s house, a three-storey dwelling with a basement area. There was a railed balcony on the first floor where the bedrooms were located.

‘Good morning, sir.’ The butler was a man of mature years and, as befitted his profession, immaculately attired in tailcoat and striped trousers.

‘I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division.’

‘Quite so, sir. You are expected. If you’ll follow me, gentlemen, the master is in the morning room.’ The butler opened a door on the far side of the hall. ‘The gentlemen from the police, sir,’ he announced.

Musgrave did not have the appearance Hardcastle was expecting of a rich industrialist. Clean-shaven and probably in his early fifties, his wavy, iron-grey hair was a little longer than was fashionable. Although he was dressed in a dark suit, he wore no waistcoat, and to add to the DDI’s amazement he had a soft-collared shirt and a rather flamboyant tie.

‘I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle, sir, and this is Detective Sergeant Marriott.’

Austen Musgrave crossed the room and shook hands with each of the detectives. ‘Make yourselves comfortable, Mr Hardcastle and Mr Marriott.’ He indicated armchairs with a wave of his hand. ‘I’m about to have some coffee. I’m sure you’d like to join me.’

‘Very kind, sir,’ murmured Hardcastle.

‘I must say that I didn’t really expect any preferential treatment when I telephoned Nevil this morning about Lily, but he said he’d put his best detectives on the case.’

‘I hope we can live up to the Commissioner’s expectations, sir,’ said Hardcastle.

Having instructed Crabb to arrange the coffee, Musgrave turned to the matter in hand. ‘Now then, what d’you want from me, Mr Hardcastle?’

‘When did you last see your daughter?’ The DDI signalled to Marriott to take notes.

‘Last Thursday,’ said Musgrave promptly. ‘That would’ve been the …’ He paused, calculating.

‘The twenty-seventh of February, sir,’ said Marriott, glancing up from his note-taking.

‘Yes, that would be it,’ said Musgrave. ‘She left the house at about half-past seven, I suppose.’

‘Did she say where she was going, sir?’ Hardcastle asked.

‘Not precisely, Inspector, no. She said she was going up to the West End to meet an old school friend. When I asked who this friend was, she refused to say and she also declined to say where exactly in the West End she was making for. But I suspect she was meeting a man.’

‘What makes you say that?’ asked the DDI.

‘She’d taken special care with her cosmetics.’

Hardcastle had doubts about Musgrave’s last statement. His own two daughters, Kitty and Maud, always took great care with their appearance regardless of who they were meeting. And that prompted Hardcastle to pose a question about the girl’s mother, but he was forestalled by Austen Musgrave.

‘The real problem, Inspector, is that Lily’s mother no longer lives with me. And that means the girl is lacking the occasional stern word of maternal caution about her conduct.’ Musgrave did not enlarge upon the reason behind his separation from his wife.

‘Do you have a photograph of Miss Musgrave, sir?’ asked Marriott.

‘Yes, I do. Ah, the coffee. Put it down over there, Crabb, if you please, and perhaps you’d fetch the photograph of Miss Lily that’s in my study.’

‘Very good, sir.’

The photograph that Crabb handed to Musgrave proved to be useless in terms of identifying the missing seventeen-year-old. It showed a demure young woman attired in a full-length dress with her hair worn long and a face devoid of make-up.

‘I’m afraid she looked nothing like that when she left here on Thursday, Mr Hardcastle.’ Musgrave sighed and passed the framed photograph to the DDI. ‘She’d had her beautiful hair cut quite short and was wearing an unbelievably short dress with a long string of beads that reached almost to her waist. And she had one of those ridiculous bandeaus around her forehead with a feather in it. As for her face, well, Inspector, I’ve not seen the like of it: eyes surrounded by kohl or something similar that made her look as though she’d received two black eyes in a fight.’

Hardcastle nodded sagely. ‘I’m afraid that’s the way young women are starting to dress these days, sir.’ That said, he was fairly sure that his wife, Alice, would do her best to prevent their daughters Kitty and Maud leaving the house dressed in such a fashion. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that Kitty was a strong-willed twenty-three-year-old who had spent most of the war years as a conductorette with the London General Omnibus Company. As for Maud, she would be out of her parents’ control in less than three weeks’ time, when she married her army officer fiancé.

‘How did Miss Musgrave travel to the West End, sir?’ asked Marriott.

‘I offered her the car and my chauffeur to take her, Mr Marriott, but she declined. Further proof that she didn’t want me to know where she was going, I suppose. I sent Crabb out to find a taxicab.’

‘I’ll need to speak to Crabb, sir,’ said Hardcastle.

‘Of course.’ Musgrave stood and made towards the bell-pull.

‘I’d rather speak to him in his pantry, sir, if you don’t mind. It would save taking up your time.’ Hardcastle knew from experience that domestic servants were more forthcoming when their employer was not listening to what they had to say.

‘If you’re quite sure, Mr Hardcastle.’

‘Quite definitely, sir.’ The DDI stood up. ‘But before I do so, I’d be obliged if you’d get someone to show me Miss Musgrave’s room.’

‘Why on earth would

Reviews for Hardcastle's Runaway

[vesper1931 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3rd March 1919 and DI Hardcastle is assigned the task of locating the missing daughter of a M.P. Once she goes missing again, this time finding her may not be as easy.
But the impatient, irritable Hardcastle and his poor Sergeant Charles Marriott are determined to solve the crime.
The story had just enough interest to keep going and was a fairly easy read. It can certainly be read as a stand-alone book in the series.
A NetGalley Book